Jerry To Microsoft: Please, Leave Me Alone

After meeting privately with shareholders like Gordy Crawford (that didn't seem to go to well), Jerry is now trying to make his case publicly, via a very brief interview with new WSJ beat reporter Jessica Vascellaro.

Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Jerry Yang accused Microsoft Corp. of trying to destabilize the Internet company without a real desire to complete a deal, and he responded sharply to recent comments by investor Carl Icahn.

The remarks by Yahoo's co-founder came a day after Microsoft said it would be interested in reopening talks to acquire some or all of Yahoo if Mr. Icahn's proxy battle to unseat the company's directors succeeds.

"To trust Mr. Icahn and his board is really a bad choice," Mr. Yang said in an interview....

"I think that I can bring stability back to Yahoo, and I want to get on with building company," Mr. Yang said. "I think that the destabilizing by Microsoft has become more and more intentional. I am not happy about it."

Mr. Yang denied some shareholders' charge that Yahoo did not properly examine Microsoft's offer to acquire Yahoo's search business, a deal some investors would like to see revived. "The deal that we ended up discussing was the culmination of a long set of discussions," he said, noting that Microsoft delivered the offer with the caveat that it had very little "gas in the tank."

Not sure why that required a sit-down: Unless we're missing something here, there's zero new information here. Instead we just got a reheat of old arguments Yahoo has been making for weeks: Carl has no plan, and Microsoft never really wanted to buy us. But at this point we think he's going to have offer something beyond that to save his job at the shareholders' meeting next month.